TheHolmAMD won't patch all chips affected by severe data theft vulnerability — Ryzen 3000, 2000, and 1000 will not get patched for 'Sinkclose'
🅷🆈🅿🆄🆁🆁🅻🅸🅽🅺AMD’s hold my beer moment…
just_another_personDumb article. If anyone is running vulnerable hardware from 15 years ago, you deserve what you get. There isn’t a lifetime guarantee on technology to be bulletproof. WTF.
Ryzen 2000 and 3000 are still fairly recent and were announced 5-6 years ago.
They aren’t patching CPUs that were released 5 years ago.
They should be patching back to Ryzen 1 since those are still perfectly good CPUs. 5-7 years really isn’t that old considering how little improvement there is with each generation.
Sure, not much per gen, but if you compare say a 1700x vs the current 9700x, you are roughly looking at a 3x improvement in single and multicore performance increase.
Most of desktop users don’t care at all about these gains. Slap in normal ram and an SSD and a 1000 series Ryzen is ready to be a run of the mill desktop, that browses and can show media no problem.
I care! But I’m a power user. Most aren’t.
I suppose that is true. Intel seems to think so as well as their low power n100 is about the performance of a 1500x.
What are you on about?
Ryzen 3xxx series processors are still being sold new today
The oldest zen processors are only just over half a decade old—a consumer CPU should be expected to be in service at least double that time.
AppoxoAMD is producing them new or your local shop us? Because AMD doesnt care about your local tech shop dead stock.
Maybe they should, and also care about the many people still using these processors that are not very old.
Support should be 5 years after End of Life or end of Manufacturing date.
The Ryzen 5 3600 is from 2019.
The XT refreshes so Ryzen 5 3600xt from mid 2020
Dumb post. Zen1 released in 2017.
3600 was released in 2019. And it they was making it for at least 2 years.
@just_another_person @TheHolm where do you get the 15 year old hardware from?
narc0tic_birdThat’s so stupid, also because they have fixes for Zen and Zen 2 based Epyc CPUs available.
Intel vs. AMD isn’t “bad guys” vs. “good guys”. Either company will take every opportunity to screw their customers over. Sure, “don’t buy Intel” holds true for 13th and 14th gen Core CPUs specifically, but other than that it’s more of a pick your poison.
How is AMD “screwing us over”? Surely they aren’t doing this on purpose? That seems very cynical.
They are 100% intentionally not patching old chips intentionally by not allocating resources to it. It’s a conscious choice made by the company.
That’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to the act of “adding vulnerabilities”. Surely they aren’t doing that on purpose. And surely they would add fixes for it if it was economically viable? It’s a matter of goodwill and reputation, right?
I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s AMD’s business model to “screw over” their customers. I just don’t.
What I mean by that is that they will take a huge disservice to their customers over a slight financial inconvenience (packaging and validating an existing fix for different CPU series with the same architecture).
I don’t classify fixing critical vulnerabilities from products as recent as the last decade as “goodwill”, that’s just what I’d expect to receive as a customer: a working product with no known vulnerabilities left open. I could’ve bought a Ryzen 3000 CPU (maybe as part of cheap office PCs or whatever) a few days ago, only to now know they have this severe vulnerability with the label WONTFIX on it. And even if I bought it 5 years ago: a fix exists, port it over!
I know some people say it’s not that critical of a bug because an attacker needs kernel access, but it’s a convenient part of a vulnerability chain for an attacker that once exploited is almost impossible to detect and remove.
Well, you feel how you feel, and you choose the products you want after this. Good luck to you! 👍
Maybe they’ll reverse course with enough blowback, they did that once with ryzen already, don’t remember which Gen it was but it wasn’t going to be backwards compatible with certain type of mobos, but then they released it anyway and some mobo manufacturers did provide bios updates to support it.
Similarish situation could happen here, the biggest hangup I’d think is that the 3000 series is nearly 5 years old, and getting mobo manufacturers on board for that could be difficult.
No they are just choosing not to roll out the fix to a known issue, which is screwing customers over on purpose (to increase profits). It’s not a matter of goodwill, they sold a product that then turned out to have a massive security flaw, and now they don’t want to fix even though they absolutely could.
I’m guessing it’s a balance between old products, effort, severity, etc. As we’ve learned, this is only an issue for an already infected system. 🤷♂️
Ryzen 3000 CPU are still sold as new, I even bought one six months ago, they’re no where near being classified as “old”. And this is not an only an issue for already infected systems because uninfected systems will intentionally be left vulnerable.
Ryzen 3000 series CPUs are still sold as new
Ah, that changes things. Not great. But still,
uninfected systems will intentionally be left vulnerable
what I meant was that apparently only compromised systems are vulnerable to this defect.
what I meant was that apparently only compromised systems are vulnerable to this defect.
That is not correct. Any system where this vulnerability is not patched out by AMD (which is all of gen 1, 2 and 3 CPUs) is left permanently vulnerable, regardless of whether or not they already are compromised. So if your PC is compromised in a few months for some reason, instead of being able to recover with a reinstall of your OS, your HW is now permanently compromised and would need to be thrown out…just because AMD didn’t want to patch this.
What I meant was exactly that, which you corroborated as correct. You’d first have to already compromise these systems, as well as exploit this vulnerability.
Gosh, it’s not easy getting my point across here today, I’m sorry.
All I’m saying is that I don’t think AMD is doing this to us, on purpose. I think it’s just happened, and they’re not handling it very well, even though it’s somewhat understandable. At least to me. 🤷♂️
But then again, I have no reason to be attacked or have my system compromised, so my situation is better than others’, perhaps.
I think what most people disagree with, is that the active choice from AMD to not fix a very fixable issue, is a choice they know leaves customers is a seriously bad position. This is something they choose to do to their customers, because they could just as well choose to help them.
they could just as well choose to help them.
I think that’s what I have a hard time believing. If they could “just as well” help, it is my belief that they also would. Because I don’t think they’re morons. I think they know this hurts their reputation. There has to be some obstacle, be it financial or lack of man power or… something. That is my belief.
Don’t you (all) think that sounds more likely than them just leaving their customers in the dark for no other reason than not having to do work?
Of course there’s a financial reason, they’ve done a cost}benefit analysis and decided that it’s financially better to screw over those customers than to spend money fixing it. But that’s exactly the issue!
I mean… 🤷♂️ The analysis is made, decision made. I probably have an affected system but… What’s the real risk for private end users? Should I really be so concerned?
Should you really be concerned about a system that can be physically ruined by malware? I would say definitely yes…
I haven’t had malware on any of my computers for 20+ years. 🤷♂️ Ever since I stopped clicking on shitty links on shitty sites and downloading shitty files with unknown contents and such behavior. I don’t think I’m worried. I’m not the target group for these kinds of attacks, I think.
Just because a store is still selling their stock doesn’t mean AND is still making them and selling them.
No, but those vulnerabilities where there when you bought it.
Would a car have a defect that was shown 5 years later, then the manufacturer would have to recall it or offer a repair program and or money in exchange.
Since everything is proprietary you cannot even fix things like this by yourself. The manufacturer needs to be held liable.
Would a car have a defect that was shown 5 years later, then the manufacturer would have to recall it or offer a repair program and or money in exchange.
I mean… A car is different, depending on the defect. It’s like “this window only breaks if you’ve already crashed the car”. (The defect only causes a vulnerability if the system is already compromised AFAICT.) And 5 years is much, much younger for a car compared to a CPU, but that’s not the important bit, I know.
But I agree with you all, I am not saying it shouldn’t be fixed, I was just saying I don’t think AMD is looking to screw over their customers on purpose. That’s all.
Norah (pup/it/she)“this window only breaks if you’ve already crashed the car”
No, it’s usually more like “this thing will break and cause a car crash” or “this thing will murder everyone in the vehicle if you crash”. And companies still will not fix it. Look at the Ford Pinto, executives very literally wrote off people’s deaths as a cost of doing business, when they’d turn into fireballs during even low speed rear-end collisions. Potentially burning down the car that hit them too.
Edit: I mean, just look at the Takata airbag recall. 100 million airbags from 20 different carmakers recalled because they wouldn’t activate during a crash.
When I said “It’s like”, I meant it as a simile to what’s going on with AMD right now. Not with what’s actually going on with car companies. Car companies are a whole different topic and discussion, of which I don’t know nothing.
Sorry, I reread it and I understand now that you were referencing the AMD chip in a comparison. I guess I still would compare it most to the Takata airbag situation. You’re right that nothing happens on it’s own, but once you’ve “crashed the car” then it kind of is a lot like an airbag not going off. It infects your computer on a hardware level, and any future OS running off that motherboard is potentially vulnerable in a way that’s impossible to tell.
But the airbag situation is different. The airbag vulnerability is something broken which already doesn’t work on the car. It’s broken before and after the crash.
But as I understood it, this vulnerability is only exploitable after the system has been compromised in some other way, first. So your system would have to first be compromised, then this vulnerability is exploitable. That’s like saying "your car radio will not function in this car, but only after the engine breaks. It’s like 🤷♂️ OK.
But the really bad thing IMO is that this vulnerability can cause permanent damage once exploited (?). That is super, super bad.
Except that doesn’t at all explain the wider recall of 100 million units. Not every single one of those airbags were faulty. First of all, how could we know? Testing an airbag is a potentially dangerous thing to do, let alone on an enormous scale that would require under-qualified persons to run the tests. Secondly, it’s not a 100% failure rate. If it were, it would have been picked up far sooner than it would take to sell 100 million units. If it happened just as severely no matter the unit’s age, it would have been picked up during crash-testing. What actually happened was an analysis of statistical averages that showed a far higher rate of failure than there should have been.
The similarities to me come from a comparison to Schrödinger’s cat. In the airbag example, you don’t know if the unit in front of you is going yo fail until you “open the box” by crashing. With the AMD vulnerability, you don’t know if ur motherboard has been infected by any virus/worm/etc until a “crash” or other signs of suspicious behaviour.
In both cases, the solution to the vulnerability removes that uncertainty, allowing you to use the product to it’s original full extent.
Look at it this way, imagine if this vulnerability existed in the ECU/BCU of a self-driving capable car. At any point someone could bury a piece of code so deeply you can’t ever be sure it’s gone. Would you want to drive that car?
I think we’re talking past each other here. Missing each other’s points. I’m definitely confused by yours, and I feel like I’m not getting across to you. So I think I’ll say thank you for the discussion, and I’m sorry.
Just know this: I’m on board with everyone saying it would be good if AMD patched this for everyone. 🙂
Hey, that’s really fair, thanks for being honest :)
The cost isn’t that high. They’re already doing it for a bunch of parallel systems.
In a just world they’d be legally required to provide the fixes, or fully refund the entire platform cost. It’s not remotely ethical to allow this to exist unpatched anywhere, regardless of support life.
I agree. 👌
hauiTangent: If we started buying risc-v systems we might get to a point where they can actually compete.
PrivateNoobThat’s still far away from us as a consumer standpoint, but I’m eagerly waiting for a time when I could buy a RISC V laptop with atleast midrange computing capabalities
I‘m more on the builder/tinkerer side so I‘m pretty much in starting position with risc-v now. But yes, its going to be some time before any of it is user ready as a pc.
Framework has a laptop in progress if you’re interested
Indeed I am. I‘m in posession of a working laptop but I could maybe order a riscv tablet from pine64. I already have the pinetime and the stuff is pretty awesome.
Well the Star64 from Pine is pretty good, just doesn’t have enough processing power and IO for my liking.
Possibly linuxIt is crazy efficient
AmandaAs in efficient per watt or some other metric?
Per watt
Jeff Geerling had a video recently about the state of RISC V for desktop. youtu.be/YxtFctEsHy0?si=SUQBiepSeOne8-2u
I really enjoyed watching it. Thanks for referring to it.
I’m waiting to see how DeepComputing’s RISC-V mainboard for the Framework turns out. I’m aware that this is very much a development platform and far from an actual end-user product, but if the price is right, I might jump in to experiment.
Sounds like a cool idea! :)
I’m not buying hardware that doesn’t suit my needs as an investment hoping maybe it eventually will.